Greetings friends!

Let me introduce myself. Im Maurice of Nassau, captain- General and the stadtholder of The Republic of the seven united provinces of The Netherlands. As im no Monarch,my heirs have nothing to do with affair of state of Netherlands.Here is a map of my beutifull country:


Constitution

The Dutch Republic was a federation of 7 provinces - Holland, Zeeland, Friesland, Groningen, Utrecht, Gelderland and Overijssel. The central institution was the parliament, called STATEN GENERAEL, to which the individual provinces sent deputations. The individual provinces had parliaments of their own, the estates (Staten), which had grown out of the old territorial estates, but had undergone changes during the Dutch Revolt. These estates were dominated by the cities' REGENTS and, of the inland provinces, by the countryside nobility which supported the House of Orange. The princes of the House of Orange, because of their personal contribution to the struggle of independence and their large property in the Dutch Republic, were regarded the only eligible candidates for the position of STADHOLDER.
The office of stadholder was a provincial one. During the revolt, William I. and his son Maurice were appointed stadholder of all 7 provinces - in 7 individual acts. The stadholder was the commander of the army. In order to pay his troops, however, the stadholder depended on the budget granted to him by the Staten Generael.

Political Situation

Our Political situation is that we have just entered Twelve Years' Truce, between the United Provinces and the Spain. This shows that we are reasonable people who love peace and our prime concern is to have a stabile Europe which will benefit us all by tradeprofits,which will make our Nations prosperous and our people happy.
We fought long and hard against Spanish to gain our independence and we value it above anything. Our military stands in guard of that independancy that i will assure you all.

Economics

First and foremost we see ourselves as traders. We are always ready to trade with willing partners so that it will benefit both sides.Here is a short description of our economical situation:

During a large part of the 17th century the Dutch, traditionally able seafarers and keen mapmakers, dominated world trade, a position which before to a lesser extent had been occupied by the Portuguese and Spaniards.

In 1602 the Dutch East India Company (Dutch: Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie or VOC) was founded. It was the first multinational ever. This company received a Dutch monopoly on Asian trade and would keep this for two centuries. It would become the world's largest commercial enterprise of the 17th century. Spices were imported in bulk and brought huge profits, due to the efforts and risks involved and seemingly insatiable demand. In 1609 the Amsterdam exchange bank was founded, a century before its English counterpart.

Religion

Calvinism was the predominant belief in the Low Countries. This does not imply that unity existed. The opposite seems true. In the beginning of the century bitter controversies between strict Calvinists and more permissive Protestants, known as Remonstrants, split the country. The Remonstrants denied predestination and championed freedom of conscience, while their more dogmatic adversaries (known as Contra-Remonstrants) gained a major victory at the Synod of Dordrecht. In the end the sheer number of reformist branches may well have worked as an antidote to intolerance.

Humanism, of which Desiderius Erasmus was an important advocate, if not the founder, had also gained a firm foothold and was partially responsible for a climate of tolerance.

This tolerance was not so easy to uphold towards Catholics, since religion played an important part in the Eighty Years War of independence against Spain (with political and economic freedom being other important motives). Hostile inclinations could however be overcome by money. Thus Catholics could buy the privilege to held ceremonies in a conventicle (a house doubling inconspicuously as a church), but public offices were out of the question. Catholics tended to keep to themselves in their own section of each town (for example, the Catholic painter Johannes Vermeer lived in the "Papist corner" of the town of Delft). The same applied to Anabaptists and Jews.

Overall, levels of tolerance were sufficiently high to attract religious refugees from other countries, notably Jewish merchants from Portugal who brought a lot of wealth with them. The revocation of the Edict of Nantes in France in 1685 made a lot of French Huguenots, many of whom were shopkeepers or scientists. Still tolerance had its limits, as philosopher Baruch de Spinoza (1632-1677) would find out.

Social Structure

In the Netherlands the social status in the 17th century was largely determined by income. Social classes existed but in a new way. Aristocracy, or nobility, had sold out most of its privileges to cities, where merchants and their money were dominant. The clergy did not have much worldly influence either: the Catholic Church had been more or less suppressed since the onset of the Eighty Years' War with Spain (1568–1648). The new Protestant movement was divided. This was different from neighbouring countries where social status was still largely determined by birth and would remain so until the French Revolution.

This is not to say that aristocrats were without social status. To the contrary, it meant rather that wealthy merchants bought themselves into nobility by becoming landowners and acquiring a coat of arms and a seal. Also aristocrats mixed with members from other classes in order to be able to support themselves as they saw fit. To this end they married their daughters to wealthy merchants, became traders themselves or took up public or military office to earn a salary. Merchants also started to value public office as a means to greater economic power and prestige. Universities became career pathways to such a public office. Rich merchants and aristocrats sent their sons on a so called Grand Tour ('Great journey') through Europe. Often accompanied by a private scholar, preferably a scientist himself, these young people visited universities in several European countries. This intermixing of patricians and aristocrats was most prominent in the second half of the century.

Next to aristocrats and patricians came the affluent middle class, consisting of Protestant ministers, lawyers, physicians, small merchants and industrialists, and clerks of large state institutions.

Lower status was attributed to small shop owners, specialized workers and craftsmen, administrators, and farmers.

Below that stood skilled labourers, house attendants and other service personnel.

At the bottom of the pyramid were 'paupers', what Karl Marx later would call the proletariat: impoverished peasants, many of whom tried their luck in a city as a beggar or day labourer.

Because of the importance of wealth in defining social status, divisions between classes were less sharply defined and social mobility was much greater than elsewhere. Calvinism, which preaches humility as an important virtue, also tended to diminish the importance of social differences. These tendencies have proved remarkably persistent: modern Dutch society, though much more secularized, is still by many considered to be remarkably egalitarian.

I hope this gives a good picture of our young Republic.

Yours sincerely M